Residential gateways are widely used to connect devices in a home of a customer to the Internet or to any other wide area network (WAN). Residential gateways use for example digital subscriber line (DSL) technology that enables a high data rate transmission over copper lines or over optical fiber broadband transmission systems.
Home networks have become part of everyday life for many end users. A home network consists of a range of heterogeneous components which means that the home network is made up of different kinds of devices. Examples are smart phones, tablets, PCs, smart TVs, set-top boxes (STB), Gateways and network attached storage devices (NAS). These devices often communicate between each other by using existing protocols like Apple's Bonjour, Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), Server Message Block (SMB), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or IP based proprietary protocols.
The communication between user devices often happens without or with weak authentication mechanisms where only the user that logs in to the device is verified. Users often use the same password on their devices to ease authentication but this weakens security a lot. Communication between devices within the home network often happens without any authentication.
Weak authentication can be attacked easily using brute force attacks. Device to device authentication can be sniffed and the data can be abused. A lot of solutions in the house needs stronger security, e.g. for home automation and home security. It is not acceptable that unauthorized users or guests with temporary access to the home network are able to communicate with the home infrastructure of a user in an unsecure way.